UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. Department of Politics and International Relations. Honour School of History and Politics

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1 UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD Department of Politics and International Relations Honour School of History and Politics Introduction to the Practice of Politics Academic Year Course providers: (Introduction to the Practice of Politics) Karma Nabulsi, St Edmund Hall. (Methods Programme) Andrew Eggers, Andrea Ruggeri, Robin Harding, Spyros Kosmidis Introduction to the Practice of Politics, is composed of : The Practice of Politics and Political Analysis The Practice of Politics is taught through departmentally-provided lectures, delivered during Michaelmas and Hilary Terms, and college-provided tutorials and classes. It is examined in the First Public Examination for the Honour School in History and Politics. Political Analysis, which provides an introduction to the methodology of empirical political analysis, is taught in Hilary Term through 8 departmentally-provided lectures and 4 workshops. It does not form part of the First Public Examination, but is assessed by a 2000-word essay to be submitted by 12 noon Tuesday 1 May Examination Decrees and Regulations 2017: The Practice of Politics. Questions will be set on the following topics: (i) regime types; definition and measurement of variations between types of democracy; (ii) political institutions and practice outside the advanced industrial democracies; stability, state capacity and state formation; (iii) the state and its institutions (executives, legislatures, parties and party systems, electoral systems, courts, constitutions and centre-periphery relations); (iv) parties and party systems; political values and identity politics. Candidates are required to answer THREE questions. 1

2 Aims: These tutorials introduce you firstly to the way government is classified across democratic regimes, and to debates about the merits and drawbacks of each type: particularly the implications for political stability, and for policy performance. In this section of your tutorial work there is an explicit link with the work you will do in the Political Analysis lectures and classes. The next set of tutorial topics considers political institutions under a range of regimes with different governance structures. In this section general questions are asked about the nature of the state: where it comes from, and what determines differences between states particularly in terms of state capacity, and stability. The third set considers, mainly in advanced democracies, key government institutions, the debates surrounding each type of institution, and the issues that arise when comparing specific institutions between countries. In this section you look mainly at the key dynamic tension between legislature and executive, though you also consider the operation of counter-powers against majoritarian government (based in the judiciary, direct democracy, decentralisation etc). Finally, the tutorials examine again mostly in advanced democracies - what determines the shape and operation of political parties and the party system, and the extent to which the values and attitudes on which political preferences appear to be changing, why this is so, and how we might measure such changes. In this section, you consider not only stable attitudes and structured partisan competition, but also more deeply divided and contested politics, and sources of populism and radicalism, and identity politics. Objectives: To introduce you to regime classification and comparison, to develop your understanding of the conditions for democratic government and political stability To develop your analytical skills. To introduce you to social science methodology in the context of historical explanation and comparative analysis. 2

3 Section B Lecture Programme Introduction to the Practice of Politics, Wednesday and Friday at 10 am Please see the termly lecture lists for the most up-to-date schedules. Michaelmas Constitutional Variations under Democracy: parliamentary, presidential and semi-presidential government 2. The Range of Regime Types: how do we distinguish democracy from nondemocracy? 3. The USA and the Classic Separation of Powers 4. The Westminster Model and Constitutional Change 5. Semi-Presidentialism: the French model 6. Majoritarian and Consensus Democracies: defining the difference and measuring performance (i) 7. Majoritarian and Consensus Democracies: defining the difference and measuring performance (ii) 8. Legislative Politics: what are legislatures for? How much variation between them? 9. Political institutions and practice outside western industrialised countries: The Case of China 10. Conflict over Rules and Regimes: (i) Social Movements 11. Conflict over Rules and Regimes: (ii) Revolution 12. The Modern French State 13. Identity politics (1): value change in advanced democracy 14. Identity politics (2): when, how and why is ethnicity politicised in advanced democracies? (to MT) 15. Executive Politics: the political and administrative dimension 16. Case-studies of the legislative/executive relation: the UK Hilary Term Case-studies of the legislative / executive relation: President and Congress in the USA 2. Party politics: how and why do party systems vary? Sociological determinants 3. Party politics: how and why do party systems vary? Institutional determinants 4. The evolution of the multi-party system in the United Kingdom since the 1980s 5. Party politics under complex cleavage patterns: the French case 6. Why the party system in the USA, and why no socialism in the USA? 7. Constitutional counter-powers: how effective in checking majoritarian power? 8. Multi-layered government: purposes and consequences 9. State Formation and State Capacity 10. Are Democracies Different? The democratic peace thesis 11. The politics of populism and radicalism in advanced industrial societies 12. Culture wars: culture as a source of conflict in international relations 13. Globalisation as a constraint on the dynamics of national politics 14. The US Supreme Court 3

4 TUTORIAL TOPICS: *** indicates a basic text. * indicates a reading that is particularly recommended. I. Constitutional variations under democracy 1. What is the difference between a presidential, semi-presidential, and parliamentary system? What other variables does the real-world operation of a regime depend on, besides those found in constitutions? Why this topic? To enable you to understand basic constitutional differences in the way power is allocated between branches of government. In stable and long-established democratic government, power is often said to derive from a constitutional agreement (usually written down, but, even when written down, qualified by conventions and understandings which may not be written down). Similarly power is said to be allocated to branches of government in patterns that vary from country to country. The topic introduces several long-established concepts: the constitutional allocation of power; the separation of powers between governmental branches and its claimed effects on legislative politics; the fusion of executive and legislature under parliamentary government; the impact of separation or fusion on executive strength; variations in the real meaning of fusion depending on legislative and party politics. In one way this is a sorting and classifying exercise to make sure you use terminology clearly, and to help you understand how political science literature uses it. Your tutor may spend some time simply working through these definitions to be sure you see how they are conventionally used. However, underlying the exercise is an implicit debate about how useful classification is, and if it is useful, what it should be based on. One part of this debate is whether a constitution and its rules are a useful power-map at all, when so much seems to depend on informal and contingent aspects of politics like the nature of party politics, or where a country is in an electoral or political cycle, or how popular a government is at any particular point, etc. If the location of political power can vary so much, do constitutions only serve as background constraints, and if so, are comparisons of how they work only of limited usefulness? Reading: ***Clark, W.R., Matt Golder, and Sonia Golder, Principles of Comparative Government, Washington, (Chapter 11: Parliamentary, Presidential, and Mixed Democracies, pp ) (Introductory: start here) King, A. (1976) Modes of Executive-Legislative Relations: Great Britain, France, and West Germany. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 1(1): Duverger, M., A New Political System Model: Semi-Presidential Government, European Journal of Political Research, 45: ***Samuels, D., 2007: Separation of Powers. In The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics, ed. Carles Boix and Susan C. Stokes, New York. ***Lijphart, A., Patterns of Democracy. Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, New Haven. 4

5 Elgie, R., The Classification of Democratic Regime Types: Conceptual Ambiguity and Contestable Assumptions, European Journal of Political Research, 33: Chiebub, J.A., Presidentialism, Parliamentarianism, and Democracy, New York Siaroff, A., Comparative Presidencies: The Inadequacy of the Presidential, Semi- Presidential and Parliamentary Distinction, European Journal of Political Research, 42(3), pp What claims have been made about the merits and defects of so-called majoritarian and consensus democracies, and how have these claims been tested in scholarly research? Why this topic? A more advanced part of the debate begun in the first tutorial topic is whether there are better ways of getting at key differences between regime types than by examining constitutional rules. One example of this, which you can only touch on lightly at this stage, is veto-player analysis, which is squarely rooted in rational-choice approaches to political analysis, and which seeks to understand political processes by examining decisions according to the number and strategic location of actors who influence outcomes by their positional or institutional power of veto (and hence their bargaining power). Proponents of this approach observe that formal constitutional power is at times a poor guide to the bargaining power observable using veto-player analysis. A further area of debate relates to assumptions about how democracy should work in a more purposeful sense: is democracy there to deliver clear choices between alternatives, or is it there to bargain between, reconcile, and integrate, the wide range of interests and demands that society is composed of? Here we reach the debate between majoritarian democracy and consensus democracy, which forms the empirical background question to much of the work you will do in Hilary Term in Political Analysis. Reading: Linz, J., (Win 1990) The Perils of Presidentialism, Journal of Democracy, 1(1), pp Cheibub, J.A., (2007) Presidentialism, Parliamentarism and Democracy (Cambridge: CUP) Lijphart, A., ed., (1992) Parliamentary versus Presidential Government (Oxford: OUP) Weaver, K,R. and Rockman, B.A., eds., (1993) Do Institutions Matter?: Government Capabilities in the United States and Abroad (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution). Shugart, M.S. (2008) Comparative Executive Legislative Relations in The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (Oxford: OUP) Ch 18. Lijphart, A., (2012) Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (New Haven: Yale UP), Ch. 7. 5

6 II. Political institutions and practice outside of the advanced industrial democracies 3. Can we draw a sharp distinction between regimes that are democratic and those that are not? If so, what are the criteria? If not, why not? Why this topic? The concept of democracy is one of the most used in the study of politics and yet there exists enormous scholarly debate over what precisely constitutes democracy and symmetrically, how to define non-democratic regimes. This tutorial explores the debate over conceptualizing political regimes and also touches on theories that explain transitions between regimes and variation within them. The tutorial readings begin with the classic distinction between thick and thin conceptions of democracy and the associated debate over measuring democracy. Some scholars argue for a multi-dimensional conception of democracy including contestation, inclusion, the separation of powers, the granting of civil liberties, and the responsiveness of government to demands. Accordingly, fine-grained scales of democracy or polyarchy have been created to capture such distinctions. Conversely other scholars have argued that democracy should be considered a bounded whole that is a binary either/or concept. Still other scholars argue that formal democracy even in paradigmatic cases like the United States might be undermined by socioeconomic inequalities, producing oligarchy rather than democracy. The tutorial then turns to variations among authoritarian and democratic regimes, examining literature that explores the worlds of electoral or competitive authoritarianism. These works problematize the connection often made between holding elections and being democratic, noting the ways in which authoritarian regimes might use elections to underscore rather than undermine their hold on power. Finally the tutorial concludes by examining the prospects of democratic survival and consolidation, also drawing on the literature explaining the origins of democratic transitions. These readings should help students think about which structural or strategic forces hold together political regimes or split them apart. Conceptualizing Democracy: Thick vs Thin Conceptions William R Clark, Matt Golder and Sonia Golder, Principles of Comparative Politics, CQ Press, Washington, 2009, (Chaps 5 and 10). Robert Dahl (1971) Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale UP), p Dahl, R. What political institutions does large-scale democracy require? Political Science Quarterly, 120, 2, ***Philippe Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl (1991), What Democracy Is and Is Not Journal of Democracy 2:3 (Summer): Jeffrey Winters and Benjamin Page (2009), Oligarchy in the United States? Perspectives on Politics 7:4 (December): Hybrid and Authoritarian Regimes Collier, David, and Steven Levitsky "Democracy with adjectives: Conceptual innovation in comparative research." World Politics 49.03: Art, David "What do we know about authoritarianism after ten years?" Comparative Politics 44.3:

7 Ahram, Ariel I., and J. Paul Goode "Researching Authoritarianism in the Discipline of Democracy." Social Science Quarterly 97.4: Gilbert, Leah Beyond Authoritarianism: The Conceptualization of Hybrid Regimes. Studies in Comparative International Development, 46(3) Consolidation ***Schedler, A., (1998) What is Democratic Consolidation?, Journal of Democracy, 9(2), pp Przeworski, A., et al., (1996) What Makes Democracies Endure?, Journal of Democracy, 7(1), pp What is state strength? What determines how strong a state is? Why this topic? The state is one of the fundamental units of political life in modern politics. Why do states exist? This question has intrigued political theorists, scholars of international relations, and comparative political scientists. Scholars looking at the rise of the state in Europe (and elsewhere), often locate its origins in both the need for decisive action in the face of military conflict and the need for tax revenue to fund it. Yet, we continue to explore the historical origins of the state, in part because we continue to debate both the rationale for the state and what explains variation in state structure. Literature looking at more recent state building, particularly outside of Europe but also in the post-soviet context, points to quite different constellations of factors affecting the development and structure of states, raising further questions. While states as political units share a number of factors, scholars have pointed to wide variation among states. Political scientists often apply adjectives such as high capacity low capacity strong and weak to describe the role of states. This work points to both the institutional and social origins of state variation. States often possess highly varying bureaucratic structures, which are in part the product of their internal structure as well as their relationship to social groups. Can states promote beneficial societal outcomes through the right institutions? Can states withstand lobbying (or corruption) from societal elites without becoming predatory? Readings: State formation in Europe: ***Clark, Golder and Golder. The Origins of the Modern State Chapter 4. Charles Tilly Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD Cambridge, Mass.: B. Blackwell. Chapters 1, 3, 5 and 6. Michael Mann, The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms, and Results, in John A. Hall, ed., States in History. Oxford: Blackwell, Tuong Vu Studying the State through State Formation World Politics. 62(01) Thomas Ertman Birth of Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Eraly Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press. Hendryk Spruyt, The Origins, Development, and Possible Decline of the Modern State. Annual Review of Political Science 5:

8 David Stasavage. Cities, constitutions, and sovereign borrowing in Europe, International Organization, 61:489{525, Summer 2007). Douglass North and Barry Weingast Constitutions and Commitment: the evolution of institutions governing public choice in 17th century England. Journal of Economic History. 49. Margaret Levi Of Rule and Revenue. Cambridge University Press. State formation outside of Europe: ** *Jeffrey Herbst. States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton University Press. Miguel A. Centeno Blood and Debt: War and Taxation in Nineteenth-century Latin America. American Journal of Sociology, 102(6) Victoria Hui, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press. State Capacity Institutions and Society: ***Darren Acemoglu and James Robinson Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. Profile Books (or Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson). Atul Kohli State Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery. Cambridge University Press. Peter Evans Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. Princeton University Press. Scott, James Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Joel Migdal Strong Societies and Weak States: State Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. Cambridge University Press Robert Putnam Making Democracy Work. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Will Reno, Corruption and State Politics in Sierra Leone. New York: Cambridge University Press. Robert Bates State Failure Annual Review of Political Science. Vol What have social movements contributed to modern political practice? Why this topic? Political action such as strikes, demonstrations, and manifestations of civic engagement most often take place outside of traditional political institutions such as political parties. The purpose of this topic is to help understand what drives individuals, groups, and movements to mobilize in this way, and whether these kinds of collective civil practices are different in form and nature; whether they help to bring disadvantaged groups into the political process, or groups which are less inclined to participate; how social movements cut across national boundaries; under what conditions these groups interact with formal institutional processes (for example elections), and with what effects; and some of the conditions under which this kind of collective action may be successful. There are also significant debates about whether these different forms of collective action can be regrouped 8

9 under the heading of contentious politics, and whether they can be defined according to rational theories. There are discussions about social movements impact and success, and the extent to which they contribute to wider political socialization. The study of social movements is an important prism for understanding how politics is experienced at grass-roots and national levels, and how forms of institutionalized political power in democracies and non-democracies - may be challenged from below. Readings: Frances Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People s Movements: Why they Succeed, How they Fail, 1979, pp ** William Gamson, Defining Movement Success, in Jeff Goodwin and James Jasper (eds), The Social Movements Reader: Cases and Concepts, Blackwell, 2003, ch. 31 Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement, 1996, pp. 1-36, , ** Vittorio Sergi and Markos Vogiatzoglou, Think Globally Act Locally? Global Repetoires in the Tunisian Uprising and the Greek Anti-Austerity Mobilizations, in Understanding European Movements: New Social Movements, Global Justice Struggles, Routledge, ** Marshall Ganz, Why David Sometimes Wins: Strategic Capacity in Social Movements. in Jeff Goodwin and James Jasper (eds.), Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning and Emotion, K. T. Andrews, Social Movements and Policy Implementation: The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and the War on Poverty, 1965 to American Sociological Review, 66(1), 2001, pp Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow, Contentious Politics, ** 6. How and why do revolutions either succeed or fail? Why this topic? Political orders and regimes are sometimes transformed comprehensively, for example from a monarchy to a republic, or from an authoritarian regime to a democracy. The purpose of this topic is to help understand how, why, and under what circumstances this sort of political change happens, and what it tells us more widely about politics. The important issues addressed are the causes of revolutions (what kind of factors make for their occurrence, and how they are to be prioritized), the processes of revolutions (what happens during the revolutionary moment); and the consequences of revolutions (the nature of the political change - partial change or complete rupture; the type of new political order; its impact on society). In thinking about its consequences, one relevant aspect is time, which can be distinguished between short, medium, and long-term factors. There are substantive contemporary debates in politics about classic historical revolutions (the French Revolution of 1789, the Russian revolution of 1917) and their relation to modern ones. There are different analytical frameworks in the literature on revolutions, which stress the varying importance of structural factors, such as class and material conditions, the role of conjuncture, and the contributions of social actors, ideas, and ideology. Among the main debates around modern revolutions are the identification of the causes, and whether they can 9

10 be generalized; the range of factors, and in particular the role of revolutionary ideas and political culture; how and why revolutions succeed or fail, and how this can be assessed. Readings: ***Jack Goldstone (ed) Revolutions: theoretical, comparative and historical studies (2002) **Hannah Arendt: Introduction on War and Revolution, and Chapter 1. The Meaning of Revolutions in, On Revolution, Penguin, pp 11-20, ** Eric Hobsbawm, Hannah Arendt On Revolution in Revolutionaries, Abacus Press, 1999, or New Press, (in Abacus edition: pp ). ** David Armitage Every Great Revolution is a Civil War, in Kenneth Baker, Edelstein, eds. Scripting Revolutions, the Comparative Study of Revolutions, Stanford, 2015, pp ** John Foran, Taking Power: On the Origins of Third World Revolutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp **Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions. Cambridge, (Introduction and Conclusion). III. The Institutions of the Democratic State 7. Judgments about the effectiveness of legislatures can only be made in the context of specific political cultures and state traditions. There are no absolute standards of judgment. Discuss Why this topic? Elected legislatures at national level are a key part of our understanding of how modern democracies operate, and have made centralized representative government, (rather than direct democracy or highly decentralized systems of government), one of democracy s key legitimizing components. We have already seen in topic 1, above, that the role of a legislature varies a great deal between presidential and parliamentary systems, with legislatures interacting with both the constitutional structure, and the nature of the party system, to produce different patterns of governance. This has generated a range of concerns about what legislatures ought to be delivering in a democracy, as perceptions have ebbed and flowed about their effectiveness in particular contexts. Sometimes the concern has been about the decline of legislatures while at other times it has been about over-mighty or excessively fragmented legislatures. The central issue is whether a legislature can fulfill a variety of sometimes contradictory tasks at the same time. We think that legislatures should be representative; that they should sustain the executive s legitimacy, particularly in parliamentary regimes; that they should scrutinise the work of the executive and bureaucracy; they should appropriate resources, especially financial, for the other branches of government to do their work; and perhaps most of all they legitimate the laws of the polity through their internal procedures. So we want them to contribute to cohesive and purposive government (in the case of parliamentary government by creating and sustaining a parliamentary majority; in 10

11 the case of presidential government, by retaining sufficient programmatic cohesion to enable a directly-elected executive to do so without the enforcing cohesion provided by a parliamentary confidence-relationship) while at the same time performing the role of holding the executive to account, scrutinizing its performance, and making national political debate meaningful to citizens. The way the two demands are reconciled in any given country will depend on how members of legislatures are socialized into expectations about the roles they are to perform, on the rules governing the legislature and its relationship with the rest of the national institutions, and on the operation of the party system. Even definitions are difficult. What for example does it mean for a legislature to be representative? Geographically, demographically, ideologically, federally? How is this related to structure? How many chambers should a legislature have for these purposes? Given how differently these factors are configured even in otherwise similar democracies, claims about legislative effectiveness are likely to remain very difficult to confirm or refute. Nevertheless comparative study of their role and operation, helping us understand them in some of the most highly-studied contexts (the USA, UK, France, Germany), is important in understanding where there are common functional imperatives in democracies, and where culture, history and state tradition continue to affect operation. Reading: ***Cox, Gary, The organization of democratic legislatures in B.R Weingast and D.A. Wittman (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, OUP, 2006 ***Laver, M., Legislatures and Parliaments in Comparative Context, The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy OUP, 2006 ***Strom, K., Parliamentary Democracy and Delegation in Strøm, K., et al. Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies, Oxford University Press 2003 Lazardeux, S., The French National Assembly s oversight of the executive, West European Politics, 32, 2, 2009 Kerrouche, E., Gone with the wind? The National Assembly under the Fifth republic in S. Brouard et al, The French Republic at Fifty: Beyond Stereotypes, 2009 Manow, P. And Burkhart, Legislative self-restraint under divided government in Germany, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 32, 2, 2007 Saalfeld, T., 'The German Bundestag: Influence and Accountability in a Complex Environment', in Norton, P., ed., Parliaments and Governments in Western Europe, 1998 Thaysen Uwe, Davidson, Roger and Livingston, Robert eds., The U.S. Congress and the German Bundestag: Comparisons of Democratic Processes, 1990, chapters 7, 9, 11, 13, and 15 Norton, Philip, Parliament in British Politics, 2005 Bogdanor, Vernon, The New British Constitution, 2009, chapter 6 Baldwin, N. Parliament in the 21st Century, 2005 Brazier, A. et al., New Politics, New Parliament? A Review of Parliamentary Modernisation since 1997,

12 Dodd, L. & Oppenheimer, B., Congress Reconsidered, 9th ed (Washington, DC: CQ Press) 2009 Ch 1-3. Mann, Thomas E. and Norman J. Ornstein, The Broken Branch: How Congress is Failing America and How to Get it Back on Track, 2006 Mayhew, David, Divided We Govern: Party Control, Lawmaking, and Investigations, , 1991 Vernon Hewitt & Shirin M. Rai ch. 3 The Indian Parliament in Niraja Gopal Jayal & Pratap Bhanu Mehta (eds.) The Oxford Companion to Politics in India Morgenstern & Nacif Legislative Politics in Latin America, especially chs. 6, 8 & 11 Joel Barkan (ed.) Legislative Power in Emerging African Democracies ch Executive power has a personal quality linked to popular support and party-based authority that sits alongside its formal, constitutionally-derived, qualities. How in practice do the two elements interact in real-world contexts? Why this topic? The role of the executive, especially chief executives, is difficult to compare across countries. How can political science establish grounds for comparison between presidents, prime ministers, chancellors and their subordinates in different regimes? How do chief executives wield power and become effective leaders in different polities? Is this a function of the institutional structure of the executive? Or should we consider contingent factors like the scope for charismatic leadership? Some models of executive power consider it to be wielded in a command-and-control way, and judge success by how far the chief executive wins in a contest with others. Alternatively, executive power is a bargaining process, acknowledging that the chief executive can only succeed in achieving goals by working collaboratively with others. In newer democracies, problems of winner-take-all executive competition can cause problems with democratic stability. Reading: ***Arend Lijphart Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in 36 Countries ch. 7 ***Giovanni Sartori Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Enquiry into Structures, Incentives and Outcomes (2nd ed.) Part 2 ***George Tsebelis Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work chs. 1-4 Peter Hennessy The British Prime Minister: The Office and Its Holders since 1945 Rhodes & Dunleavy Prime Minister, Cabinet & Core Executive Martin Smith The Core Executive in Britain Richard Neustadt Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan 1990 edition Charles O. Jones The Presidency in a Separated System Gillian Peele et al. (eds.) Developments in American Politics 7 ch. 6 Robert Elgie Duverger, Semi-presidentialism and the Supposed French Archetype West European Politics 32(2)

13 Vincent Wright & Andrew Knapp The Government and Politics of France (5th ed.) chs 3, 4, & 5 Ramachandra Guha Political Leadership in Independent India in Niraja Gopal Jayal & Pratap Bhanu Mehta (eds.) The Oxford Companion to Politics in India Juan Linz The Perils of Presidentialism in Journal of Democracy 1 (1) 1990 Tom Lodge Politics in South Africa: From Mandela to Mbeki Prologue & ch Democracies usually provide a range of counter-powers to majoritarian power, including judicial review, decentralisation of power, bi-cameralism, a permanent professionalized bureaucracy, direct democracy, and the media. Consider, in the case of any two, what the effectiveness of such counter-powers depends on, and how we would measure and compare effectiveness. Why this topic? Democratic government is widely thought to require a balance between purposive government that is capable of identifying and addressing policy problems, and restraints on government. These restraints seek to ensure that power is exercised within agreed limits, and under agreed rules, that proper deliberation precedes key decisions, that different voices are heard as policy is being made, and that where possible (a big qualification) decision-making power is devolved to levels close to those most affected by it. Such checks and balances supplement the central tension between the executive and the legislature, which is itself potentially (though not always) a check on power. With the exception of the role of the media, the role of these restraints is usually described in a constitution, though they are not all present in every constitution, and the use of the constitution in understanding how power is wielded varies a good deal from country to country. (In rare cases there is no formal constitution at all). They have come to be known in much modern comparative political analysis as institutional veto players. The most fundamental restraint on executive power is constitutional: the commitment of government itself to be governed by a set of authoritative rules and principles. Constitutionalism requires a codified constitution that describes both the powers of different branches of government and a bill of rights. It also seems to require an umpire: a constitutional court, though an activist court s behavior may become so engaged in the political process that it can start to resemble a participant in the policy-making process as well as an umpire. In a federal state, sovereignty is split constitutionally between different levels usually the federal and state levels so that each has at least some final authority in given policy areas. Bi-cameral legislatures are those with two distinct assemblies, usually based on the representation of different territorial entities. The actual power of each assembly varies. Less common in constitutions, and in general less dramatic in their effects, are those procedures that bring public opinion to bear on decision-makers through routes other than elected ones. Provisions for referendums and plebiscites are obviously constitutional, while others for example factors which facilitate a free and pluralistic media - generally have non-constitutional roots. Finally, in advanced democracies, there is the impact of a permanent, professionalized bureaucracy. Since it lacks democratic roots, and is by some regarded as thwarting the effectiveness of policy action, bureaucracy may not immediately seem to fall into the category of a democratic check. However its professional expertise, set against impulsive and inexpert politicians, may allow it to be a type of check and its strategic role in decision- 13

14 making certainly makes it a potential veto-player. Given the range of counter-powers to the power exercised through the central institutions of legislature and executive, there are no simple ways of assessing the functionality of checks and balances as a whole. Each particular institution needs first to be understood in its own national context, and comparisons then need to be made across jurisdictions focusing on individual institutions. Conceptually however all these institutions have certain common features and effects, and beyond asking how well each operates in a national context against the purposes set for it, comparative political analysis (in more advanced courses than the Prelim, however) can also assess, through formal veto-player theory, how much concentration or dispersal of power a particular jurisdiction displays. Reading: ***William R Clark, Matt Golder and Sonia Golder, Principles of Comparative Politics, CQ Press, Washington, 2009, (Chaps 5 and 10). ***Arendt Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy. Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Three Democracies, New Haven, ***George Tsebelis, Decision-making in Political Systems: Veto-players in Presidentialism, Multi-cameralism and Multi-partysim, British Journal of Political Science, 25, 1995, Sarah Binder The Dynamics of Legislative Gridlock, American Political Science Review, 93, 1999: Kenneth J. Meier, Bureaucracy and Democracy: The Case for More Bureaucracy and Less Democracy, Public Administration Review, 57, 3, 1997, Walter Murphy et al, Courts, Judges and Politics: an Introduction to the Judicial Process, McGraw-Hill, New York, William H Riker, Federalism in Fred Greenstein et al, (eds) Handbook of Political Science 5: Government Institutions and Processes, Addison Wesley, Reading Mass, 1975 Alfred Steppan Federalism and Democracy: beyond the US Model, Journal of Democracy, 10, 1999, Alec Stone-Sweet, Constitutions and Judicial Power, in Daniele Caramini (ed) Comparative Politics, New York OUP, Is there a distinctively democratic way of waging war? Why this topic? The absence of a world government has led many analysts of International Relations (IR) to believe that all countries exist within a constant state of war and insecurity. As Thomas Hobbes famously put it in Leviathan, in all times kings and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independency, are in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of gladiators, having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another. However, one of the most robust empirical findings of IR scholarship over the last fifty years has been that democracies are different, in that they do not seem to fight wars with other democracies (although, of course, they do continue to fight wars against non-democracies). Many have drawn the conclusion that, while the Hobbesian state of war continues in the rest 14

15 of the world, a zone of peace now exists among democratic states, and that regions such as the Middle East would be more peaceful if more regimes within them were democratic. This belief has been a major theme within recent US foreign policy: see, for example, George W. Bush s Second Inaugural Address. Several controversies remain. For a start, some dispute the empirical claims of the democratic peace thesis, arguing that it rests on excessively narrow ways of conceptualising democracy, war and peace, or that its findings are statistically insignificant. But perhaps the largest literature has emerged around the question of why the democratic peace exists. Is it a result of the institutions within democratic political systems, such as the publicness of decision-making, or the checks and balances that inhibit the executive? Or is it the result of liberal values and a culture of bargaining and compromise that are unique to democratic states? Or might it even be due to some other factor that has less to do with democracy as such, such as high levels of economic interdependence among liberal democracies, or the hegemonic influence of the United States? There are also disagreements about the conclusion that democratisation will make the world a more peaceful place: perhaps the pacific qualities of democracy in the western world will not travel to new democracies elsewhere, while some believe that newly democratising states are exceptionally belligerent during the unstable process of political transition, which implies that the dangers of promoting democratisation may outweigh the possible benefits of a more democratic world. Finally, the tendency to focus on explaining the democratic peace has attracted criticisms that it has led to the neglect of other important aspects of the relationship between democracies and war: for example, their continuing tendency to make war against non-democracies, or the fact that they mobilise their forces and actually fight their wars in different ways from non-democratic states. Reading: ***Barkawi, Tarak and Mark Laffey (eds.) Democracy, Liberalism and War: Rethinking the Democratic Peace Debate (Boulder: Lynne Reinner). ***Brown, Michael E., Sean M. Lynn-Jones and Steven E. Miller (eds.) Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge: MIT Press). [Contains excerpts from several of other pieces on reading list.] ***Russett, Bruce Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Coker, Christopher Humane Warfare (London: Routledge). Coker, Christopher The Collision of Modern and Post-Modern War, in Yves Boyer and Julian Lindley-French (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of War, pp. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Doyle, Michael Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs. Parts 1 & 2. Philosophy & Public Affairs 12 (3): , and 12 (4): Gat, Azar The Changing Character of War, in Hew Strachan and Sibylle Scheipers (eds.), The Changing Character of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Kagan, Robert Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (New York: Vintage Books). 15

16 Lipson, Charles Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Mansfield, Edward D. and Jack Snyder Democratization and the Danger of War. International Security 20 (1): Maoz, Zeev and Bruce Russett Normative and Structural Causes of Democratic Peace, American Political Science Review 87 (3): Owen, John M Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). International Politics Special Issue on the democratic peace. 41 (4), especially articles by Hasenclever and Wagner, MacMillan, Müller, and Owen. Reiter, Dan and Allan C. Stam Democracies at War (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Risse-Kappen, Thomas Democratic Peace Warlike Democracies? A Constructivist Interpretation of the Liberal Argument. European Journal of International Relations 19 (4): Rosato, Sebastian The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory. American Political Science Review 97 (4): See also Forum on Rosato s argument, in APSR Vol. 99, No. 3 (2005). Ward, Michael D. and Kristian S. Gleditsch Democratizing for Peace. American Political Science Review 92 (1), pp IV. Parties, party systems, values, identity politics 11. The determinants of party systems: a) What are the sociological and institutional determinants of party systems? What are the major weaknesses of these explanations? b) To what extent are party systems in developing world democracies based on social cleavages? Why this topic? To understand a key body of literature seeking to explain the sociological determinants of party systems across all democracies, from the emergence of mass democracy to the third wave of democratisation. In addition, to understand how political institutions, particularly the type of electoral system, shape the party system, thereby augmenting the sociological approach. A key interpretation of modern party systems in the advanced industrial democracies is that parties (thanks also to the freezing effect of strong party organisation) were frozen in the mould established in the late 19th and early 20th century, with the transition to mass democracy, raising the barrier to entry for new parties. From this perspective therefore, parties present in any particular advanced democracy primarily reflect the underlying social cleavages, which were important in the period of mass democratisation. With the third wave of democratization in the early1980s, we also witnessed the emergence of new democracies from Latin America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. While the literature on party systems 16

17 in Western Europe sees party competition as programmatic, and the bases for it as social and ideological, work on party systems in other parts of the world often highlight competition, which is not rooted in social cleavages and stress alternatives to programmatic links, in particular clientelism. This topic introduces the concept of a party system, of political cleavages and party organization. It also highlights the differences between party systems in the advanced industrial democracies and newer, developing world democracies. However, political parties vary a good deal, both within and between countries, across advanced and developing democracies, and in the extent to which they are rooted in strong and distinct social identities. Many look as if they are not built on social identities at all. The rate of formation of new parties in recent decades seems to have increased in several advanced democracies, and their sociological origins are often difficult to pin down. What is more, in developing democracies, party systems often do not appear to reflect social cleavages at all. Since Maurice Duverger s (1954) seminal work, observers have pointed to the effect of institutions on the shape of the party system, most notably the electoral system and more recently, the format of the executive. This topic introduces the mechanical and psychological effects of electoral systems on party systems. It also contrasts the effect of majoritarian electoral systems and proportional representation on party systems, and examines the interaction of electoral systems and cleavage structures. The hypothesis that parties in the advanced industrial democracies reflect social cleavages, and that party systems are frozen in time, is much contested on several levels. The thesis of long-term historical continuity in party systems often requires a very stretched interpretation of continuity, even across the period from the 1880s to the 1960s, let alone subsequently. Parties vary a good deal, both within and between countries, in the extent to which they are rooted in strong and distinct social identities, and many look as if they are not built on social identities at all. The rate of formation of new parties in recent decades seems to have increased in several advanced democracies, and their sociological origins are often difficult to pin down. Although this does not render the sociological thesis of Lipset and Rokkan redundant, it does raise questions about its utility as an explanation for the contemporary party systems of the advanced democracies. Secondly, this sociological thesis also struggles as a framework of understanding for party systems outside of the advanced industrial democracies. Party systems in these countries often have not followed the evolutionary development pattern of the Western European party systems described by Stein and Rokkan. Rather the development of party systems outside of the advanced industrial democracies has tended to be discontinuous; reflect divergent responses to expanded political mobilization; or simply reflect long-standing historical elite divisions. In many of these party systems as a consequence, competition, is often not based on programmatic policy proposals, but on catch-all parties cantered upon personality and clientelism. Finally, while it is widely agreed that the relationship between electoral and party systems is mutual, nearly all work has been focused on the effect of electoral systems on party systems, and a general consensus exists on this topic. However, electoral institutions may shape party systems, but these institutions also emerge from party systems. How party systems shape 17

18 electoral systems remains completely underdeveloped and under-theorised and no clear consensus yet exists on this issue. Reading: Sociological Determinants Dix, Robert H Cleavage Structures and Party Systems in Latin America, Comparative Politics, 22 (1), pp Gallagher, Michael, Michael Laver and Peter Mair Representative Government in Modern Europe (5th ed.) London. Chapter 9. Kitschelt, Herbert and Steven Wilkinson Citizen politician Linkages: An Introduction, in Kitschelt, Herbert and Steven Wilkinson (eds.) Patrons, Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 1. Kitschelt, Herbert The Formation of Party Systems in East-Central Europe, Politics and Society 20 (1): pp Lipset, Seymour.M. and Stein Rokkan Cleavage structures, party systems and voter alignments: an introduction, in Peter Mair (ed.) The West European Party System. Oxford University Press. ***Mair, Peter Party System Change: Approaches and Interpretations, Oxford University Press. Chapters 1-4. Rose, Richard, and Derek Urwin Persistence and Change in Western Party Systems since 1970, Political Studies, 18: pp Institutional Determinants Amorim Neto, Octavio and Gary Cox, Electoral Institutions, Cleavage Structures, and the Number of Parties. American Journal of Political Science, 41 (1): pp Benoit, Ken Electoral Laws as Political Consequences: Explaining the Origins and Change of Electoral Institutions. Annual Review of Political Science, 10: pp ***Cox, Gary W Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems. Cambridge University Press. Chapters 1-3. Grumm, John G Theories of Electoral Systems, Midwest Journal of Political Science, 2: pp Rae, Douglas W The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws. Yale University Press. Sartori, Giovanni The Influence of Electoral Systems: Faulty Laws or Faulty Method. in Bernie Grofman and Arend Lijphart (eds.) Electoral Laws and their Political Consequences. Agathon Press. Samuels, David J. and Matthew S. Shugart Presidents, Parties and Prime Ministers: How the separation of powers affects party organization and behaviour. Cambridge University Press. Chapters 1 and 2. 18